Location may be Brooklyn, but the crowd looks Vermont https://t.co/F48IfZu0TE
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) March 3, 2019
New York is always a high-stress venue, and the early 1970s was one of the rougher eras. Lots of natives fled for quieter climes — I was one of them! (And not ashamed I did, although I should not have persuaded my sweet freshman roommate from Iron Mountain that NYC had a secret lottery system requiring a certain percentage of city-born high school graduates to leave, in order to make room for all the Midwesterners who wanted to move into the Big Apple.)
Just a few years earlier, Bernie Sanders was another escapee, who went on to make a good life for himself in a whiter quieter place. But, one way and another, things have changed back in the nabe — and Bernie Is Back, Beyotches!…
Klobuchar opens up in Minnesota in a snow storm and Bernie goes “Well I can announce even whiter than that, Jane, get that white reggae band and Talculm X on the phone!”
— Regina’s sending cops after ??s (@ReginaA1981) March 2, 2019
The supporters positioned behind Bernie Sanders in Brooklyn today looked a lot more diverse than the group of supporters standing in front of him. #BernieInBrooklyn pic.twitter.com/Vg7TyATYXO
— Ashton Pittman (@ashtonpittman) March 2, 2019
Here is another crowd shot from another angle. Still overwhelmingly male, largely white. pic.twitter.com/r9yWbYKqWO
— Ashton Pittman (@ashtonpittman) March 3, 2019
Wait, I missed this – Sanders had a Stein voter introduce him? ?? https://t.co/2JB0O1V0KX
— Tom Watson (@tomwatson) March 2, 2019
Jane Sanders at Bernie’s campaign launch: “I know it may not be politically correct to identify myself as a wife, but it’s one of the great honors of my life.”
We’re not at CPAC anymore.
— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) March 2, 2019
But you just might be at Mirror-World CPAC, on the other leg of the political horseshoe. Different True Believers, same fevered enthusiasm for The Narrative!
One way Bernie Sanders movement is very much like Trump?
Be awful with POC/Women's issues but use tokenising measures like bundling POC behind your podium or BLACKFACE cosplaying troll accounts to "pretend you don't prioritise whiteness#BernieInBrooklyn pic.twitter.com/IUuCeVzSm5
— T. Fisher King (@T_FisherKing) March 2, 2019
Population of Oakland – 425k
Kamala Harris rally – 20k attendeesPopulation of NYC – 8.6M
Population of Brooklyn – 2.65M
Bernie Sanders rally – 13k pic.twitter.com/XNxU82z9Yq— robert mueller is a cop (@notcapnamerica) March 2, 2019
But the Media Village Idiots — led, of course, by the FTFNYTimes — really *want* the 2020 election to be a contest between Trump and Bizzaro-Trump…
For context @jmartNYT is also the Times reporter who focused on mocking HOW women candidates ATE, when they declared
White man declares and Jon brands him a civil rights ICON. Pats campaign on back
The NY times is glorified toilet paper… smh https://t.co/Gn3lccYsJs
— T. Fisher King (@T_FisherKing) March 2, 2019
One sign of the increased professionalism of the Bernie Sanders campaign: Virtually every story off his launch rally today, both before and after, is heavily about his increased focus on personal narrative.
They're driving a storyline.
— Shane Goldmacher (@ShaneGoldmacher) March 2, 2019
A fun game to play would be imagining you describing this campaign strategy if it was executed by a woman.
— Robert S. Hamer (@robsolonhamer) March 2, 2019
Damien
I come to Balloon Juice for pet pictures and shitting on Bernie Sanders, and it looks like we’re all out of pet pictures.
God I am so looking forward to seeing him get dragged nonstop this time around. The thing where he claimed him quote was out of context and then they cut to him literally saying those exact words, entirely in context, was a thing of true beauty.
Fuuuuuuuuck hiiiiiiiiiim.
hells littlest angel
“I know it may not be politically correct to identify myself as a wife, but it’s one of the great honors of my life.”
Standing by her man, making him look way more like a jerk than he can make himself look on his own.
Jay
“
DPRK News Service
@DPRK_News
.
@DPRK_News
sending special correspondent to CPAC in 2020, to observe and assess appropriate quarantine measures for lunatics.”
Jay
Nancy Pelosi
@TeamPelosi
·
16h
A picture is worth 1,000 words but
@aoc
,
@IlhanMN
,
@JahanaHayesCT
and Nancy on the cover of
@RollingStone
is worth millions of dreams to women and girls across America.
To them we say: know your power. Know your worth. Have a plan. And be ready. #WomensHistoryMonth
Luthe
@Jay: Awesome! Jahana Hayes is my Representative.
Also, fuck Wilmer and his gun-humping.
rikyrah
??? at the Bernie launch.
NotMax
That’s what old men do.
“Why, back in my day…”
And for gosh sakes, he moved to Vermont 55 years ago. Any connection with today’s Brooklyn is tenuous at best.
plato
The only bs connection has is his nou yak accent.
OzarkHillbilly
Starting my Sunday with Wilmer. Blech.
Sleeper
Jesus. What the hell happened to this site. Thousands of people come out in the cold to rally for someone running for the Dem nomination and all you guys can do is shit all over every one of them. You folks are two steps away from “Trump and Sanders are no different” – exactly the kind of lunacy you’ve spent the last three years running down Sanders supporters for supposedly espousing.
plato
@Sleeper:
Where are the bs tax returns?
NotMax
@Sleeper
He was an empty suit and a phony four years ago and remains one today.
Oh, and he is not a member of the Democratic party.
Lumpy
It’s silly to suggest that living someplace for the first 18 years of your life doesn’t count as a ‘connection’. That is inarguably a formative experience. Regarding turnout, it snowed the night before the rally, and it wasn’t particularly well publicized (I live in NY and follow Bernie on FB, and only saw one post there announcing it). Nobody seemed to know if the rally was indoors, outdoors, or where it would be on the campus. So I don’t think these are important criticisms.
I hope Warren is the nominee but I like Bernie too, and if he’s the nominee I will gladly vote for him. I don’t blame Bernie for how incredibly annoying many of his supporters are. I’m kind of surprised to see the depth of the anger here at Balloon Juice. I wish everybody would forget the last primary, which was heavily manipulated, and concentrate on the present primary (which will also be… heavily manipulated). I don’t care if Stinky Gymshoe is the nominee, vote Blue!
OzarkHillbilly
Stephon Clark: police officers who shot man eight times will not be charged
Victim Blaming 101.
NotMax
‘Tis the season for the Bernmites to come out of the woodwork.
@Lumpy
What about the word today do you not understand? He has as much connection to contemporary Brooklyn as do the Dodgers.
J R in WV
@Sleeper:
And so a troll is awake and visiting Balloon-Juice at 4 am on Saturday night?
And is upset because a Blue Democratic site is dumping on a non-Democratic politician trying AGAIN to steal the Democratic Party nomination, and ot help Trump win election again…!!!…
Fuck you first thing in the morning, Russian tool Wilmer-bot. I hope it’s worth it for the money you’re making working to kill Democracy in our world.
And so few comments with the word sleeper in them, mostly used as a descriptive, not the nym. Hmmm.
NotMax
Meanwhile, it is midnight and here I am putting together the big pot of onion soup I intended to cook this afternoon.
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
@Sleeper: Fuck BS, and fuck his diehard supporters. He – and they – helped Trump win the presidency. Not sufficient for that, of course, but they were among a number of factors that tipped the scales. BS went along with the utter conspiracy-theory nonsense of “the DNC and Hillary rigged the primaries” and his diehard supporters continue to spew that horseshit to this day.
The disgusting and enraging behavior of his delegates at the Democratic Convention was all anyone needed to see and hear to know whether his diehard supporters were going to help or hurt Hillary in the general. You’re a fool if you don’t recognize they hurt. And they’ll do it again in 2020 when their shouty, phony savior is once again not the Democratic nominee.
Fuck Bernie, and fuck his looney-left, useful tool, diehard supporters.
NotMax
Sunday morn upbeat music.
(For Immanentize.)
Jay
Trolls gotta troll.
Under the water,
Past the bridge,
Ain’t 2016,
We won’t be fooled again,
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhrZgojY1Q
NotMax
@NotMax
More my own ‘take your own sweet time to become functional’ tempo music.
;)
Chris Johnson
@Lumpy:
Why is that, Boris? If you’re another trollski then you probably know Balloon Juice is super-fertile ground for heightening the contradictions. It’s way over-represented for Democratic party operatives and older folks with more of a grasp on the levers of power, and thanks to the history as a formerly-Republican blog it’s ground zero for a certain ambition, a fantasy of the ‘reachable conservative’.
‘Wilmer’ was invented by Russian trolls in hopes that naming Sanders after a film noir catamite would catch on among traditional Democrats. There’s also an implication that he gets sodomized by Sidney Greenstreet, a stand-in for Putin, suggesting that Sanders takes it in turn from Putin. The gay panic aspect plays well to a certain crowd. There’s always some mysterious nym popping up to ask ‘why we all call him Wilmer’ and keep the meme alive.
AND just as icing on the cake, Tad Devine’s operation is so poisonous that Sanders’ operation has just recently got RID of him… which is too damn little, way too late. Sanders let his purity kool-aid blind him to the simple fact that he was being used by Russia to harm the Democrats. This is a known Putin tactic: in Russia, Putin will actually donate money to enemies just to discredit them, and it’s the same thing through Devine. Much like Trump (yeah I said it) Sanders didn’t think it would hurt to get an advantage against his political enemies, and unlike Trump he conned himself into thinking it didn’t count: that, because he said ‘I’m tired of hearing about your emails’ and instructed his people to vote for Clinton, that was gonna be enough. It’s not enough, will never be enough, when a legion of Twitter fake-bros are there to put out a completely different narrative and you’re not in control of them. To this day, Sanders does not run the BernieBros, they are some of the most effective Russian trolls.
The other effective Russian trolls are here, reminding you to always fight the left until America falls over and dies of heatstroke. Maybe Putin thinks he will corner the market on green tech? I don’t think so. I think he is just operating on the reflexive ‘chaos and confusion to my enemies is always good’.
You can convince yourself of that if you ignore that we’re all in the same lifeboat.
Fuck off with the ‘I’m so surprised with the depth of the anger on Balloon Juice’ when it has been the job of those like you to cause it.
Right now on the looney left, they are telling people that the likes of the Balloon Juice posters will actually vote for Trump if made to choose between Trump and Sanders. Here, they are trying to make that be the simple truth.
Yutsano
@Sleeper: Give me one specific detailed plan Bernie has from his platform. I’m not talking some universal health care where everyone is covered. I mean the specific mechanics to getting the laws passed, what will and won’t be covered, the funding mechanism, and such
I’ll wait.
And no Just Going To His Website doesn’t work
John S.
@Chris Johnson:
Wow, this comment is almost worthy enough to be a Doug J sock puppet from back in the day when this was a conservative blog, and other liberal Democrats such as myself came here to do pitched battle with Cole.
It’s just a wee bit on the obvious side, though.
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
@Lumpy:
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and just say you’re naïve as all fuck.
“I don’t blame Bernie for how annoying incredibly annoying many of his supporters are”. Well, aren’t you magnanimous to such a sweet, well-meaning old man? You think it’s the annoyance factor that has those of us who actually care about defeating Trump and American fascism up in arms against this phony and the purity-pony fools who support him? Christ you’re dim (benefit of the doubt).
“Forget the last primary”? Sure, if the old useful-tool asshole wasn’t running again, and laying the groundwork to ratfuck the eventual 2020 Democratic nominee (which won’t be him). Sadly, he is.
“Heavily manipulated” primary? Fuck right the hell off with that “rigged primaries” bullshit – puts you right smack in useful tool territory, yourself (giving you, once again, the benefit of the doubt).
Barbara
@hells littlest angel: I can imagine how that might have gotten garbled but it’s too exhausting. However, i don’t think we need to make this personal to Sanders, because after 2016 we should vote according to the notion that if you run and don’t get the nomination, you shouldn’t run again. If you run hard and lose it means you don’t have what it takes. That’s my view of Sanders and now he is even older.
different-church-lady
Who the hell have you been hanging with, Jane?
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Back in 2016 Wilmer held a rally at a African American community center in South Carolina. He hired a jazz band to entertain the crowd….. a white jazz band.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Clinton……….58%
Wilmer……….42%
But her emails!!!
Hi applejinx. I hope you managed to free up some space on your credit cards. Jane’s consulting fees and a new vacation home aren’t going to pay for themselves.
JR
Wherever they came from, I’m actually kind of with the new guys here. Not that I like Bernie particularly much, but the guy has a coalition. And it will be easier to keep team (D) together if we don’t spend too much time shitting on him.
Chyron HR
@different-church-lady:
An angry old man who spends all day ranting about “Identity Politics”?
plato
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
A double digit loss with an almost triple the spend. Ouch.
trnc
@Sleeper:
There are a lot of differences between them, but IMHO they’re both frauds. Not releasing tax returns and denying quotes made on the record are big tells. I support a lot of the agenda he espouses, but Sen. Warren has been fighting tooth and nail for years over a lot of the same issues and has actually accomplished some things (eg, CFPB). Other candidates seem to have some serious plans that outline how they can be achieved, whereas Sanders is pretty vague for someone who has been in congress as long as he has.
Bottom line – I don’t trust him.
Victor Matheson
@JR: You are exactly right, and the people here expected that of Bernie and his supporters in 2016. When Hillary had to fight through 2 additional unnecessary months of primaries after the nomination was unwinnable and charges of rigged primaries and voters who switched from Bernie to stein instead of Hillary that’s pretty much when Bernie really started to get shit on here.
zhena gogolia
@Victor Matheson:
And don’t forget the convention.
Matt McIrvin
@JR: The trouble is, part of his coalition–a proportionately larger part now that it’s shrunken overall–is actively and vocally bent on sabotaging the Democratic Party and spreading absurd conspiracy theories about it. And Sanders makes nice sounds about supporting the nominee, now and even in 2016, but he keeps these people around and sometimes keeps them in leadership positions, because they mobilize a significant part of his support.
We’re not going to get these people on board, and they do more harm than good.
In the early stages of the 2016 primary, I wanted Bernie Sanders to do well and was tempted to vote for him: I didn’t think he’d be a good nominee but I wanted his economic-justice message to be amplified. Eventually, though, his campaign’s central focus shifted from economics to this idea that the Democratic Party was a corrupt institution that wasn’t treating Bernie Sanders fairly, and this was just not helpful.
Not only that, it didn’t magically go away during the general-election campaign, the way these intra-party spats traditionally do. Donald Trump actively and gleefully used the Bernie supporters’ complaints about Democrats as a campaign line, and they didn’t seem to mind. So I think a lot of us have lost our faith in letting primary fights play out and hoping it will all get better by summer of election year.
trnc
@Barbara:
I don’t agree with that because we have several fine candidates this time around and only one can be the nominee, so that would be arbitrarily sidelining some great people. I would rather the party make a rule that only people who have joined the party can be on the ballot.
trnc
@JR:
Historically speaking, there is zero chance of his coalition supporting the eventual nominee. Our best chance of making them a non-issue is to try to show more people what a shady fuck he is before they start to swoon.
AM in NC
Long time reader and infrequent commenter here, and for what it is worth, here’s my take (full disclosure, I’m a woman; I’m white; I’m just over 50; and I’m upper middle class): Bernie was incredibly exciting to me last time around because I believed we needed someone with real visibility to be talking about “fringe” progressive policies in order to expand the parameters of acceptable political options on the left side of the spectrum. So I was thrilled to have both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in the race.
As the campaign progressed, however, I thought it was obvious that Clinton was the only choice in terms of having a president who was actually competent at both formulating and executing real-world progressive policy goals. And I am interested in actually getting shit done. I also felt that Bernie was untested by the media and other candidates. Because he wasn’t taken seriously as a possible winner, he got a serious pass on oppo research, and the few times he was pricked, he didn’t respond all that well. Then there were his blind spots regarding racism and patriarchy and how those systems of oppression are separate from but intimately connected to systems of class oppression. And if you truly want to enact progressive policies that work for everyone, you can’t simply wave racism and misogyny away with “free college and healthcare solves everything” magical thinking. Especially when your plans for those items simply don’t add up.
Anyway, by the end of the race I was left wishing and hoping that Bernie would use his popularity and enthusiasm to continue to be a spokesman for pushing the leftward edges of what is considered acceptable policy, thus pulling the center to the left. That he would become an effective gadfly getting media to discuss the fact that huge majorities want more progressive policies – on everything from environmental protections, to taxes, to Social Security, to legalization of marijuana, to criminal justice reform, etc. AND that he would work to strengthen the Democratic Party (the party he ostensibly wanted to lead) around the country, because that’s the only way progressives make actual, real-world political gains in our two-party system.
I’m thrilled that progressive concerns are definitely on the radar screen now, the party is moving in a leftward direction overall, and we have a bunch of new, young, progressive office holders to take up the mantle of change moving forward, and Bernie should get some credit for that shift. Some, but not a lot. The major energy and work that made those shifts happen came from from women and racial minorities – basically the groups Bernie ignored during his campaign, and who were overwhelmingly for Clinton. Unfortunately, since 2016 I haven’t seen any evidence that Bernie is concerned more with pushing a progressive agenda, regardless of who might enact it, than with promoting himself as progressive savior. Rather than doing the hard, and often boring, and mostly unglamorous work of formulating workable policies and building coalitions to enact those policies, Bernie is about self-promotion as the only true progressive out there. If he wants to give speeches and hold rallies and make people excited about leftist policy goals, great, more power to him. But that’s not the job of the president. I sure hope he can be a team player if he doesn’t win the nomination, but I’m afraid it seems always to be about him.
trnc
@Matt McIrvin:
Not to mention being unadulterated bullshit.
Gin & Tonic
@Gin & Tonic: Left out the important part of the quote, “which was heavily manipulated”
Need more coffee.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@AM in NC: You’re describing my evolution on Sanders as well.
And on social media, his followers are often toxic. Maybe you can’t blame him for that, but you don’t get him without them.
Gin & Tonic
@Lumpy: Oh, FYWP
Please show your work.
Ladyraxterinok
@Lumpy: Some recognize they were manipulated. The hardcore ‘Hillary haters’ who supported Wilmer in 16 refuse to admit they were manipulated. And still hate her and most democrats.
Ladyraxterinok
@Chris Johnson: You are saying that we here who dislike Bermie are pawns of Russian trolls eagerly sowing dissension at Balloon-juice?
Betty Cracker
@AM in NC: Great comment. Honestly, threads like these make me long for the sweet release of death. I’m pondering the dilemma as expressed by @JR, i.e., “…the guy has a coalition. And it will be easier to keep team (D) together if we don’t spend too much time shitting on him,” and @trnc, i.e., “Our best chance of making them [the Bernie coalition] a non-issue is to try to show more people what a shady fuck he is before they start to swoon.”
I honestly don’t know what’s the best approach. The Sanders 2016 supporters I know in real life have moved on, and it seems to me that heaping derision on Sanders now is counterproductive. But I have no idea how representative the people I know are of Democrats in general.
I suspect Sanders and Warren will split the progressive vote, Biden and Klobuchar the moderate vote and Kamala Harris will win the nomination. That would be fine with me, though thus far I like Warren’s policy proposals best.
Anyhoo, in my scenario, I think Harris would handily whip Trump’s ass. Of course, I thought Hillary would curb-stomp Trump too, so my political prognostications are worthless. But I think 2016 was a perfect shit-storm that is unlikely to be repeated. Please FSM.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Betty Cracker: One of my good friends in Iowa was a precinct captain for Sanders in 2016, She’s moved on too.
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
OMG, right? Even the prospect of carrying this much anger for another four years brings me to the point of tears. I’m not sure I have it in me anymore.
PsiFighter37
Fuck that guy.
Dave
Over 65 white male veteran here. Made the mistake of giving money to Bernie in 2016 and watching it pissed away in a gd personality cult culminating in endless crap about rigged primaries (looking at you TYT Peter thiel got his money’s worth) To this day I still get fund raising emails from Bernie and I always ask for my money back from last time. Want peace and harmony with berniebros? Let them make the first step
B.B.A.
Bernie is a Russian agent and you’ll never convince me otherwise.
plato
The bs ah russian troll lost in 2016 fair & square since the dem base saw through his bs. The coward is not even a dem (and fuck the dem establishment for even letting him run this time around in their primaries) and he and his minions feel entitled at another undeserving shot? Fuck him and fuck ’em.
Patricia Kayden
@B.B.A.: As is Jill Stein.
AxelFoley
@JR:
2018 proved to everyone that we don’t need his coalition. They didn’t do shit for us but complain about Dems and we won without the fuckers. And then thy tried to take credit for Democrats whooping GOP ass.
Nah, fuck Bernie and his coalition of willing idiots.
Laura Too
@AM in NC: Same demo, same m.o. I got caught up in Our Rev after the election looking for a place to put my energy after the march in D.C. What an eye opener. I didn’t realize how much sexism, rape culture, etc. still existed. They paid lip service to equality, but that was all it was. The backstage machinations and drama reminded me of frat boys who were really paranoid. I got out after 3 meetings.
Chris Johnson
@Ladyraxterinok: Yup. AND that Bernie got hijacked by Russians at some point in the primary (possibly even before NH, but that was when I saw the inside of the campaign and the amazing progressive women running it) and hasn’t ditched ’em until just recently, which is WAY too late.
It’s a hell of a mess. It really is. And the Russians are working every bit as hard on you as they are on the progressive left. That is Putin’s normal modus operandi… which is why some people here get REALLY upset about it being called out. To them, the illusion of ‘trolls only ever sway the left’ is extremely important to maintain. But of course it’s nonsense, tantamount to troll malpractice.
I got fooled. You got fooled. It’s the internet. Turns out to be a greater weakness than we thought, plus folks like Zuckerberg are happy to sell us out for money, and work for whoever will cough up the cash. The Russian oligarchs do have cash. Trolls are actually a really cheap investment.
AM in NC
@Laura Too: I went with putting my energy into my local Democratic Party and working on local political campaigns, and it felt GREAT. Very diverse group (although more women than men), concrete plans for getting voters to the polls and expanding progressive policies, and a genuine sense of camaraderie. Sorry your experience with Our Revolution was such a negative one. And yes, it’s amazing how much sexism and misogyny is out there just waiting to be exposed when you scratch the surface.
chopper
@Sleeper:
exactly! all those people who took a subway ride and then stood in a place for an hour made the ultimate sacrifice, we should honor them. i propose a federal holiday.
chopper
@trnc:
exactly. aint makin that mistake again. he needs to be shown the door by voters ASAP before he starts trashing the place again out of spite like last time.
Barbara
@trnc: I am not talking about someone who sticks their toe in and drops out in the first three months. I am talking about after the field has been whittled down and a few candidates engage in a pitched battle that goes through many months. And yes, on that basis, I concluded many moons ago that Hillary Clinton should not have bothered to run in 2016. This isn’t an exercise in rewarding someone because “it’s their time.” We need to get past that.
ETA: And on that basis, even if he hadn’t imploded, John Edwards never should have run again.
Uncle Cosmo
@NotMax: So as far back as the early 60s the world was Messing with his BS.
(I’ll let myself out now…)
Laura Too
@AM in NC: I did that as well. Spent 10 hours at city convention, also an real eye opener. I went to NC State Fair and was really impressed with the Democrats booth. Thought it was interesting that no one was at the Republicans booth but lots at Trumps.
patroclus
I thought it was a good speech. But it didn’t mention gun control at all. And it didn’t attack Trump’s ridiculous trade/tariff policies. And it didn’t mention racial and sexual inequality until well into the speech; giving the impression that for Bernie these issues are not high on his list. I don’t think Bernie is really all that liberal and I’m going to look for other candidates that are.
Chyron HR
@Barbara:
So do you people literally think that Democrats were going around with t-shirts and bumper stickers that said “Hillary 2016: It’s Her Turn”? Are you so stupid and/or deranged you sincerely believe that was her campaign slogan? I’m asking for real.
Betty Cracker
@Chris Johnson: Aren’t you the guy who tried to convince us that Trump was defecting to Russia when he went to the G20 in Buenos Aires?
Beatrice Blacklow
@trnc: Warren said the Dem primary in 2016 was rigged. Because of that, I cannot support her in the primaries. I will vote for her in the general if she is the nominee.
J R in WV
@B.B.A.:
Yes, but only because the Russians currently in power can prove Bernard Sanders was a Soviet agent long ago, when he went to Soviet Russia for his Honeymoon vacay trip.
randy khan
@Betty Cracker:
We always can count on you to say just the right thing.
I was never on Team Sanders, though it goes without saying that I would certainly have voted for him over whatever emerged from the fetid swamp of the Republican primaries. While I wish he had dropped out when it was clear he couldn’t win, I wasn’t even mad at him for staying in.
What ticked me off is that he really stopped emphasizing his issues (where he did, in fact, push Hillary to the left) and started pushing the “rigged process” stuff. That’s never a winning hand in an election where there’s no opportunity to change the rules, and all it does is help the other party. (Even today I see Bernistas on Facebook and elsewhere invoking conspiracy theories about the New York party registration rules – which have been in place literally for decades – and absentee ballots in California. And they never get that they’re not helping.)
I’m not going to be supporting him this time, either, and one big reason is that his coalition is not the coalition that wins elections for Democrats. The photos really tell you what you need to know. I suspect that will get him once again. I just hope he’s more graceful about it this time, although my expectations are low.
James Willett
Go Bernie. It’s good to see you still in the game while Wilma is baking cookies for Bill and the grandkids.
Suzanne
@J R in WV: The people to whom you’re responding may be Russian bots, but there are plenty of Dems who still love Bernie. Many of them are active in my LD and County branches of the Dem Party.
I’ve gotta confess that I think the Bernie hatred here is out of scale to his “badness”, too. I’m not going to vote for him in the primary, and I don’t think he’ll win the nomination, and I think his time has passed. But in the hypothetical future in which he did win the nomination against Trump, that would be an easy fuckin’ decision. He’d be inept and likely a shitty manager and likely not accomplish much. But he wouldn’t be evil.
We are in a goddamn existential fight against evil forces and evil people who want to destroy this country. Bernie is flawed—ego, singular focus, some really obnoxious supporters, etc—but he is not Trump, or a Nazi, or a Nazi enabler….LIKE THE PEOPLE WE HAVE CURRENTLY RUNNING THE COUNTRY. (Low bar, but here we are.)
Another Scott
@Matt McIrvin: He was pounding on the Corrupt™ system from the first day. May 2015 transcript:
He kept saying the same thing about the Corrupt™ system over and over and over again, but leaving out all the qualifiers and winking and nodding that he was really talking about Hillary. And he was happy that his supporters were taking it that way.
He knew he was damaging the party, because he knew that was the only way he could win.
I hope he’s crushed in the early races and becomes irrelevant before Super Tuesday…
Grrr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Miss Bianca
@AM in NC: way late to the thread, just wanted to say, “Brava, baby.” Lurk less, comment more!
Betty Cracker
@Suzanne: Co-signed.
Betty Cracker
@Another Scott: I hope he flames out early too, but every word in the speech excerpt you quoted is true. Whichever Democrat wins needs to talk about rooting out corruption.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: I get not being a Bernie supporter. This shit feels entirely fuckin’ disproportionate.
The chair of my LD is an awesome old hippie lady who works her ass off for the Party. My LD, in the freakin’ Phoenix suburbs, has two Dem state reps and a Dem state senator. She was a Bernie delegate. Most of the LD leadership here are Boomer-age former hippies, and they are all just awesome people. Most were Bernie supporters. I really don’t see how liberal politics are progressed by telling those people (who have organized their asses off and been successful in a really hard place) to fuck off because they “supported Wilmer, a Russian agent” or some nonsense.
Kathleen
@hells littlest angel: Bonus: Standing by her man after he tells not to stand next to him (apologies if someone else already posted):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9MDXJy6BDQ
Brachiator
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I hope this is the case for many of his former supporters.
I guess for now I will only half watch his campaign. He has already screwed up by pointlessly dissing Clinton.
And I am still waiting to see his tax returns.
I wish the Democrats would declare him ineligible unless he formally joins the party.
J R in WV
@J R in WV:
Well, and because he’s a Russian tool, also, too! The Kompromat is just icing on top for the controlling agent, whoever that is.
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
@Betty Cracker: The Bernie supporters I know in real life (in several different states, not only locally) are mostly – not all – “Bernie-or-Busters” who have never come off their deranged Hillary-hate, nor their hatred for the Democratic “establishment”. They’re all in on their “DNC rigged the primaries for Hillary and subverted democracy, our guy was robbed!” bullshit. They’re politically-myopic purity-pony leftists who see “corporatist Dems” (with Hillary at the top of that list) as equally their enemy as GOP fascists, and they absolutely contributed to Trump winning in 2016. I’ve tried reasoning with them (calmly, leaving aside invective, etc.), but no dice.
So fuck them, and fuck Sanders’ phony, no-accomplishment, narcissistic ass, too. Like most conservatives, they made me – and the vast majority of liberal and centrist Dems – their enemy first, and they occupy that battle-line still.
Anyone supporting Sanders for 2020 hasn’t “moved on”, and we’ll need to get past their ratfucking (which we didn’t quite do in 2016) to beat Trump in 2020. He – and his supporters – are a net negative in this existential fight against American fascism. Hate them? You bet I do. Far as I’m concerned it’s return fire.
sigyn
@Lumpy: “Nobody seemed to know if the rally was indoors, outdoors, or where it would be on the campus.”
Thanks for pointing out a more important criticism that we hadn’t gotten around to yet!
ellie
Fuck Bernie Sanders.
James E Powell
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch:
Clinton……….58%
Wilmer……….42%
Those voters obviously rigged the primary!
dr. luba
@hells littlest angel:
Well, it’s not like she can identify as a successful college administrator…..
dr. luba
@Another Scott: From your lips to Goddess’s ears.
Miss Bianca
I think my savage distaste – bordering on revulsion – for Bernie Sanders and his most rabid followers comes from the fact that I, personally, never had to grapple so hard with the notion of how unexamined white privilege makes for some daamned ugly-ludicrous blind spots. All my white campus-radical acquaintance, the kind who could and would reminisce about bombing the ROTC buildings, and most all of whom are quite comfortably-off these days, refusing to recognize how little Sanders seemed to care about anyone who didn’t look exactly like them. Watching their indifference to POC at the state convention talking about how much HRC’s candidacy and Presidency meant to *them*. I became thoroughly ashamed of my erstwhile “tribe”, and truth to tell, I’m not over it yet.
Barbara
@Chyron HR: And I’m not answering “for real” any question that is premised on the notion that I might be stupid or deranged. Sorry.
FelonyGovt
Know how we’re all trying to be respectful here of each other’s Dem primary preferences? Warren, Harris, Klobuchar- no one is lobbing grenades at any of them, instead people are calmly discussing their experience, policies. etc.
Bernie supporters NEVER treated Hillary supporters that way in 2016. We were denigrated, criticized, and made fun of to the point where support for Hillary became almost an underground thing so as not to get caught up in the viciousness. And there was a huge heap of ageism and mostly, misogyny involved. I think this helps explain the visceral hatred many of us still feel.
Lalophobia
@James Willett: Yeah. She’s better off there instead of, you know, in the White House. Where she’d have been keeping it safe from the monster who derangedly roams its halls now.
Also, fuck you and him. The only thing good about him being in the race is we can watch him crash and bern a second time.
debbie
@FelonyGovt:
Actually, that reminded me of Alice Waters’ incredulity that people of lower means couldn’t afford the food she demanded they provide for their children. If one doesn’t step outside one’s bubble…
Kent
I’m surprised Sanders “blackface” problem isn’t getting more play. I’m referring to the twitter threads about using stock black photos up on the top of this thread.
chopper
@dr. luba:
zing!
no really, she fucked over a bunch of college kids, fuck her.
different-church-lady
@Victor Matheson:
I recall seeing first-hand how those charges really energized some of the deplorables. Played right into Trump’s “Crooked Hillary” taunt. Synergy, intentional or not.
Chris Johnson
@Suzanne:
That’s because it’s being stage-managed. So much of what Balloon Juicers are saying in this and other threads are true: personally, I got fucked by my support for the guy and I’m convinced he was getting herded in unhelpful directions by Russian assets of various sorts, plus a bunch of his supporters are fake.
UNlike many Balloon Juicers I hang out in more hard-left places and that’s why I get to see some of the stage-management. This place gets off easy. Places like Reddit, there are upvotes and downvotes and you can get people together to literally bury inconvenient narratives with teams of downvotes, on top of the kind of narrative management we get here. And on places like Reddit, Russian intervention is THE most suppressed narrative: you can’t even hint at it when it’s super obvious (like with the NRA connection) without suddenly getting -10 score and being hidden from view. I play with this so I get to see what happens… though I think they are having difficulty pushing Bernie, because the fact is the guy is out of step. He honestly believes class dominates all other types of discourse, he doesn’t actually want gun control and he doesn’t want to abolish ICE. He’s about as much of a weak reed as any more corporate Democrat. And that’s before you get into racism, sexism, and Bro-ism.
…yeah, I thought Trump was going to bail. That is before I saw the people’s faces at that summit. Holy shit, was I ever wrong. I think the lesson there is, Trump has outlived his usefulness and is only valuable to Putin for whatever extra damage he can do on the way out.
I do think he WANTS to, but then I want to live in a country where the shit we used to believe had any relation to reality. But here we are.
taumaturgo
@NotMax: Bernie Sanders’ campaign said it raised a whopping $5.9 million in first 24 hours, over 200,000 donors with an average donation of $27.00 and nearly a million volunteers. Pretty good, I’ll say for ANY democratic candidate refusing to accept corporate pack $$. Instead of looking right, look over your left and see whos coming.
different-church-lady
@Suzanne:
…and who warped Bernie-mania helped install into power.
Ben Cisco
Wasn’t on board with him last time; his constant disregard for people like me, his inability to articulate anything on any issue beyond the 30,000 foot view, and yes, his complete and utter lack of enough self-awareness to know when it was time to take the freaking L already – all added up to a big ol’ NOPE.
Four years on, and it doesn’t appear that he’s learned anything. I’m looking for someone who both gets it and can win – that ain’t Bernie. The question is when does HE figure that out?
Miss Bianca
@taumaturgo: Privyet, tovarisch! Hey – how many rubles in a $27 donation?
different-church-lady
Let’s call this what it is: Hostile Takeover Attempt v2.0
Miss Bianca
@Ben Cisco:
How about “never”? Does “never” work for you? No? Crap…
Ben Cisco
@Miss Bianca: You’re probably right about that, but I have a feeling it won’t matter – the veil has been pulled back, and the wizard isn’t what he appeared to be…
Brachiator
@Kent:
Maybe because it’s not important.
Betty Cracker
@Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot:
It’s the “with us or against us” language I object to here, i.e., “Anyone supporting Sanders for 2020” is the enemy in an existential battle. IIRC, about 12% of Sanders primary voters voted for Trump, Stein or other. Every single one of them can die in a fucking fire for all I care. But it makes no sense to me to impugn the 88% who went on to vote for Clinton, nor to assume anyone who supports Sanders now is the enemy unless they’re a member of the aforementioned 12%.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker: Precisely right. The vast majority of Bernie supporters went on to vote for HRC. Only a very small minority of them went on to vote for Trump.
So, by all means, let’s continue shitting on our coalition (the coalition we have, maybe not the one that we want), and then wonder why we don’t win things.
Seanly
JFC, I am fucking tired of the god damned Boomers*. Yes, I will be an agist asshole and say that I don’t want anyone over 60 as the Democratic nominee. Bernie would be 79 at the inauguration? I like many of the policies espoused by Bernie, Warren, Biden, Clinton, but their generation had their time. We need to move on from the fucking mid-20th Century and who smoked what in 1960-fucking-7.
*Bernie having been born in 1941 is actually older than the Boomers…
Suzanne
@Chris Johnson: The vast majority of Sanders supporters sucked it up and voted for Clinton in 2016 in the general election. I have zero doubt that online Russian nefariousness is a thing, but I also know that many more people just agree with him and find him personally appealing. I want to keep those people in the Democratic coalition. Not to mention, I do not think those people are evil.
trnc
@Barbara:
That seems like an odd conclusion. It wasn’t “her time” due to some arbitrary number of years of wanting the position. It was time for someone who had a shitload of actual experience and knowledge in many of the various duties required by a president. She didn’t plant her ass in a seat and check off boxes on some monster.com presidential resume form. She got important bills passed as senator (eg, children’s health care) and deserves a LOT of credit for 9/11 first responder health benefits. AS, SOS she worked to promote women’s rights around the world because she correctly determined that one common denominator of failed states was repression of women, which became known as the Clinton Doctrine.
When asshats like Chuck Todd think that someone is “over prepared” for a presidential debate, that person shoots to the top of my list.
taumaturgo
@Suzanne:
The liberals do win when they recapture the liberal ideas abandoned by DINOs a long time ago.
NotMax
@taumaturgo
Yawn. Raising an initial kernel of money is no great trick. Look what that yahoo was pledged for a Wall.
1) Join the Democratic party
2) Show your taxes
When it comes to “left,” Wilmer’s track record is no hat, all prattle (and to the right of me on many matters). As for where to look, I’ll look ahead if it’s all the same to you.
trnc
@Suzanne:
Yes, probably a little harsh, but then again, you’ll notice that a lot of people here say they’d vote for him in the general if he wins the nomination. By contrast, his supporters followed his lead and totally fucked over Clinton’s nomination, so I understand why people here feel an outsized antagonism toward them. I don’t actually see much difference between his diehards and the knee jerk anti-govt people who vote against policies designed to help poor people just so they can go, “Neener, neener.”
Barbara
@trnc: I am not suggesting that she didn’t deserve the nomination, just that, as a category, “also rans” who run again face higher odds of defeat, and that not winning the nomination the first time gives us information that perhaps we should pay a lot more attention to.
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
@Betty Cracker: Betty, you are my favorite front-pager on this, my favorite blog (and I go back to when I regularly followed The Horse – Media Whores Online – near the beginning, and later this very place even before JC’s “road to Damascus” epiphany in ‘05). Just putting that out there for what it’s worth, as an upraised palm of comity or whatever.
I don’t intend to impugn those Sanders supporters who turned and supported Hillary in ’16 – I’m talking about those asshole dead-enders as I described in my first comment on this thread, who we both agree helped Trump.
And when I write “net negative” that’s exactly what I mean – there are some positive effects to Sanders’ campaign and those supporting it (they’re not goddamn Gabbard and whoever her benighted supporters might be), but to me the negative effects of him running again (not least this internecine conflict of which, yes, I – and many others – are part of) definitely outweigh any positives. He should recognize how he – gracelessly, narcissistically, maybe even deliberately, who knows? – hurt Hillary’s chances in the ’16 general and sit down and shut the fuck up before it happens again in ‘20. But he won’t, obviously.
Supporting Sanders now means – whatever good, left-leaning, social democrat or democratic socialist intent one may have – that you are completely ignoring the very real ratfucking of the Democratic Party and its presidential nominee that happened from him and his side in ‘16. That despicable shit at the convention was not an anomaly. Some admission and contrition of that fact from Sanders and his current supporters would go a long way in getting to “bygones be bygones”. Not seeing it (just the opposite, actually), will be happy to shake hands with those who made me their enemy first if it ever happens.
I’ll take whatever response you may give to this (if you do) without further comment (mine are typically too damn long as it is).
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
@Suzanne:
It’s not me — and many other ordinary, long-time Democrats like me who hate what Sanders and his diehards did in ’16 — who are “shitting on our coalition”. You have that exactly backwards.
Chris Johnson
@taumaturgo:
Before or after Tad Devine left the campaign?
If it’s before, and it all shuts off now that Tad is gone, I know exactly who is coming and from where. I don’t trust it this time and maybe should not have trusted it the first time. I just know that I gave him hundreds of dollars to fight billionaires. This time I gave him, and give him, no money at all.
cokane
@Suzanne: This is correct. Moreover, the 12% that voted R were probably not a majority of leftie bernie bros that some people on here imagine. People forget that Sanders collected a fair amount of votes from conservative democrats during the primary (yes these people exist, think of Joe Manchin supporters). Essentially voters who were unlikely to vote for a Dem in the general anyways.
The Other Jerome
I know I’m late to the party. But I just want to say this: I sincerely wish Balloon Juice FPer’s and posters would stop with the Bernie trashing. I’ve been a regular lurker here ever since I first heard of a Republican blogger coming to his senses during the Bush years. I believe I read it on MYDD or Atrios and followed the link. I liked the idea of someone from another tribe having an open mind and then changing that mind when the facts became clear. I’ve always respected JC for that. Again I’ve lurked here for YEARS.
But for a couple of years now, it’s been so negative on this site that it’s shocking. Yes I voted for Bernie in the primary. And yes I’m not a Clinton fan. But I still voted for her. I voted for her even though I’m a child of the 90’s and could apparently have been a “Super-predator”. I voted for her even though her camp speculated about the “whitey” tape. I voted for her even though the Hillaryis44 people DIDN’T vote for Obama. I ignored all of this and voted for her because though she and her staunch supporters are not my friends, they are my ALLIES. We don’t need to have a beer together, we just need to do our parts at the appointed time. It’s most important that we win imho.
It’s odd to me that on a site created by a former Republican I should have to say this, but for the love of God, stop burning bridges to people whom you disagree with. Always leave room for them to come on in. Someone left an invitation without judgement for Cole many years ago. And now he’s created a liberal fighting machine. Imagine if he was met by the level of hate that some now have for people who dared to disagree with them? The door has to be left open. Even for former trumpers. It’s the only way we win. I’m not saying compromise values. Just leave the door open. You will never berate someone into agreeing with you. That negativity will only be matched with negativity. I’m never going apologize for voting for Bernie. I’d choose him over Clinton every time. But I will ALWAYS show up when called to do my part. We’re allies. It’s the least I can do.
randy khan
@The Other Jerome:
I don’t hate Sanders; if he were the nominee, I’d vote for him in a second, and apparently with considerably more enthusiasm than mustered when you voted for Clinton. But if you want to understand the antipathy for a lot of Sanders supporters here, you might want to re-read your second paragraph.
Granted, that paragraph is a lot milder than some of the stuff I’ve had to wade through here and on social media. Still, to say that you condescended to vote for the Democratic nominee despite hating a lot of things about her (two of which appear actually to be things you hate about people who supported her, not Clinton herself*) is exactly the kind of thing that annoys people who believed she was the better candidate. And, after all, that was the position of a majority of the people who voted in the Democratic nomination process in 2016.
*ClintonIs44 turned out to be some guy in New York who had no affiliation with Clinton.
BellyCat
@The Other Jerome: Day-umn! Well said.
(Mostly) avidly lurking for the past eight years and gotta say— I ain’t no Bernie fan, nor Stein, due to the chaos they both (knowingly and/or intentionally) created in 2016.
Hate on THEM (and Trump), not the poor saps who fell for their schtick. To think we don’t need some of these voters for 2020, given the guaranteed digital assaults ahead, is PURE FUCKING FOLLY.
So, think a bit on this folks the next time you “pie” a new voice after a couple of comments that don’t make you all warm and fuzzy. Could be a troll, sure, but could also be someone who genuinely gives a shit and is just trying to decipher what the fuck is going on.
How ‘bout pie being reserved for diners who have overstayed their welcome for a loooong time, rather than the first time or two they stroll in.
After all, WWJCD?
Richard Guhl
I know I’m well past the sell-by date for this conversation, but I just wanted to add a few observations.
First, Bernie has always been a gadfly backbencher, and gadflies serve a useful function in our democracy. But in my understanding of history, gadflies don’t have good leadership skills. They tend to monomania and self-righteousness.
Second, those very qualities tend to attract a cult-like devotion, an impatience with process, and in the case of our system, a belief in the Green Lantern theory of the Presidency, that if a policy is said loudly enough and forcefully enough, it will definitely happen.
Third, I found it telling that Bernie felt compelled to ask his followers to play nice with others. I would say that followers take their cues from their leader. So perhaps Bernie should look at his own shouting, and finger wagging, and scowling, and shushing of other candidates.
I think part of the lingering bitterness directed to Bernie is due to the way he tended to cast aspersions on the motives of others, which was certainly picked up by his followers.
cokane
@The Other Jerome: It’s largely just AL unnecessarily fanning the flames here. I’m all for legit criticism of Sanders — release your taxes, get more realistic policy proposals. But AL’s posts are full of unimportant and often superficial insults. And her posts rile up a crowd here of conspiracy theorists whose basis in facts is the same as Limbaugh’s fanbase.
AxelFoley
@Suzanne:
Again, 2018 proved we don’t need the fuckers. Fuck Bernie and his supporters. And fuck all this defeatist talk about how we need them.
randy khan
@BellyCat:
Have you read his Twitter feed? You might want to reconsider whether you want the rest of us to emulate him.
Scotian
I watched closely the 2016 campaign, and even then it was clear from April 2016 Sanders was at best unlikely to win the nomination, by May to very unlikely at best, to not at all in June, yet instead of dialing down the rhetoric he dialed it up, and on the rigging attack line most. In 2008 when Clinton saw she might not win she dialed it back in the last couple of months to less heated rhetoric to prevent wounding the party coming together in the inevitable aftermath of any nomination fight, let alone one as close and tight as that one ended up being. Sanders did not right up to the Convention itself. On those grounds alone having a lot of anger and hatred towards someone that last time campaigned starting with the promise that once he joined the Dem party he was a Dem for the rest of his political life regardless of the outcome of the Primary, well we all know the reality of that one too. I hold Sanders responsible for his actions/inactions, and while his online followers were not under his direct control, he did about as much to dissuade them from their more misogynistic attacks on Clinton and her supporters as Trump did in telling Russia not to help his campaign because the election was for Americans to decide.
This more than enough reason to be bitter towards Sanders and the reality he enabled on its own. Just as a seasoned politician (which he is, not very able in terms of doing stuff, but a profession pol for a near quarter century when he ran in 2016, so clearly so) had to have understood the impacts of these actions unless he was so indifferent to them he could not be bothered to even take them into consideration, and that is the kindest interpretation on can give IMHO for this, the rest are worse, although for me I find that bad enough. The naked misogyny in that campaign, especially from the Sanders side was sickening, loud, and toxic. He did nothing about it, indeed arguably went out of his way to fan it as a means of tearing Clinton down so as to surpass her in the primary. Again, this is all him, not Clinton, not Trump, not even Vlad, Bernie himself. That to this day he fails to understand just how much anger he now engenders among those he must have to win an election as the Dem nominee, that too speaks to his poor political judgment and unfitness for the office he seeks. I strongly suspect that he is at or exceeding Clinton antipathy levels within self described Dem voters, and unlike she who was the focus of a years long campaign to make her that way, his was all his own doing.
So for him to run again right again, well that is at best a vanity project, at worst in this case one can legitimately argue the potentials for the wishes of a hostile foreign government/nation. Which is why for me as a Canadian I view these things carefully, because being the one nation between Russia and America kinda makes it an essential security issue. As it is American politics and culture washes over us with great force, so I pay attention and understand your systems of governance and governments, and what that shows me about Sanders is nothing good.
When it is this obvious to a Canadian observer just how destructive, toxic, and damaging his conduct was in 2016, when I can easily cite some of why these are fair terms/descriptors to be using as I have done already, I would submit Sanders is, as another so well put it, a net negative, politically. If he had really cared about his issues, his revolution, he would have stayed the grand old elder and allowed his youthful successors to carry the torch forward, but that is not what we have here.
No, the Sanders scorn and harsh criticism is entirely warranted, and I would submit necessary at this point. Sanders proved what he was already, and his actions so far do not near enough demonstrate his understanding of the problems he created for himself and the party he now chooses to fight for the leadership of, let alone any real fundamental improvement or change where those flaws exist. His sanctimonious hypocrisy is simply too exposed for too many now, his self indulgent need to suddenly be the great leader, the great hope, too easily seen through now. It is his own actions and inactions which paint this picture, one does not need to look anywhere else. In too many ways he truly is the flip side of Trump, not least in his apparent need for a cult of personality to support his great revolution.
Sorry, I’m just so disgusted by this man and what he spawned, and for all the great pulling the Dems to the left this cycle he gets credit for, I would still submit it will be a net negative for what he enabled in 2016. Purely for myself, the world he helped enable with President Trump and the threat it creates for my home, well that is enough to engender my severe distaste and dislike, and I don’t have partisan considerations unlike an American colouring my views here. And why I feel the need to vent about his return yet again even in a dead thread, because I would have been in it had I had the time to be around in real time for it, instead at the end of the weekend as it is turning out here. Yet another example of why Sanders should not even be thinking of running again. And I was only turned this way from the spillover on the edges, for those living it as Americans such as so many here…again underscores why Sanders deserves the scorn he gets for running again as well as for what he already did and so clearly fails to own from 2016.
Lumpy
@J R in WV:
Who are you calling a “Russian bot”, jackass? I’ll bet 20 dollars I’ve been on this website a lot longer than you!
Lumpy
@Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot: Bernie Sanders did NOT say that the DNC rigged the primary, he said (and I quote) that Hillary won “fair and square”. He also insisted on being the person to officially nominate Clinton at the Democratic convention. I think some of you folks were watching a different primary.
Lumpy
I rarely comment here but I’ve been reading (and rarely posting – I’m interested in the front page comments, and expect a certain amount of thoughtfulness which we didn’t get this time) I’d guess for about 15 years… right around the time Cole first figured out how terrible Dumbya was.
I see some of you in the comment section, with your “Russian Bot” accusations, are genuinely certifiable. Good luck to you!
Lumpy
Bernie Sanders nominates Clinton at the Democratic convention:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9tMnZKsRPY
I’ll make sure to skip Anne Laurie’s threads after this.
Scotian
I’ll make sure to skip Anne Laurie’s threads after this.